And until we fix this issue, we recommend that players with photosensitivity, or who have an epileptic condition or have had seizures of any kind consult their physician before playing.
Taking Feedback and Missing the Point
Machine Learning's value comes at the cost of losing control of an objective you're supposed to technically be defending for as long as possible. The amount of feedback given that expressed how absolutely bad this feels gameplay wise was very high and also how functionally being so dependent on survivors doing their objective so get value from a perk you as the killer brought in is not fun. We can't control or reliably time when the benefit of machine learning will occur. It would be one thing if the situation with gen repair time discrepancies were more consistently balanced so that they didn't didn't have giant swings. Even then it still wouldn't be all that enjoyable because even those who are playing just for fun want to actually be rewarded FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS, NOT THEIR OPPONENTS' ACTIONS!
We want to express OUR SKILL, NOT THEIRS! It doesn't matter if the haste is 7% or 10% or even 100% because ultimately I have so little control over this and only benefit if I give up control. Something that is already in short supply with the massive reduction to all forms gen regression and the massively unchecked gen repair speed increase and efficiency. Which brings me to Scavenger, where the feedback was basically geared towards expressing how damaging it is for survivors to be able to recharge toolboxes and be guaranteed toolboxes on chest search when toolboxes are extremely problematic in their balance currently.
Diminishing returns are still returns, so making survivors have a 50% reduction to gen repair speed and having to hit one more great skillcheck isn't really addressing this issue. They can still do gens while getting fresh charges to their toolboxes. What sense does this make when literally 80% of the killers in this game can't even remotely pressure the game enough to circumvent that level of diminished efficiency? Killers already complain about the game feeling too fast for them and are already playing in some most irritating ways to try and keep up because even though you added 10 seconds to base repair time, that 10 seconds rarely actually exists because I have yet to encounter teams that don't have at least two gen repair perks and about 40% of my games feature toolboxes with brand new parts if I don't dodge every single toolbox.
It's great you take feedback, but then we see the results and it just seems like y'all consistently miss the point. Meanwhile Pyramid Head from went getting a much needed and desired QoL buff to getting nothing at all. Which gotta be honest doesn't look great. You've already got a perception problem where people, mainly killer players, feel they are not really being listened to or getting actual help. So seeing a killer go from getting something to nothing at all on top everything else just makes it seem like right now we're not actually meant to be enjoying the game. Not saying I believe that, but it is a very common sentiment that y'all have be struggling with. "Nobody is enjoying the game right now" is a statement that starting to feel more and more true. I love this game, but I find it difficult to really see constantly investing what little time and energy i do into it when the part I love isn't fun and is being made more unfun.
Taking feedback and missing the point like this is going to eventually damage this game in a way that content attrition numbers won't cover for once veteran players start to truly ebb out of the community.
Comments
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It's weird, because they did Trial of Torment well. You become undetectable and now survivors have a target to try to disarm. You can either use the undetectable to try to sneak up on another survivor or who it to ambush the survivor that tries to touch the gen you just kicked.
Obviously Trial of Torment isn't a popular perk, but at least it's something you can take advantage of on your own accord.
Machine Learning just feels like a more conditional trial of torment that takes away all your control for it.
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I run Trail of Torment a ton and it's actually quite good because I am rewarded for being proactive and able to make plays. It feels really nice to use and pairs well with dragon's grip. Two perks that I wouldn't have gotten to use if gen regression didn't get nerfed so heavily, but on the flip side game can absolutely fly by. Machine learning would have been a great supplement to that build, but instead they made it an even worse version of Game Afoot of all perks.
Game Afoot needs you to be in a chase with specifically the obsession and then also be able to break a palette, wall, or gen mid chase to get a hast effect. That's already a massively bad perk and they seemed to have looked at it and said "What if this but even less reliable". It's so strange to me and it's frustrating.
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Well, someone wrote he would rather revert PH buff then fix caging mechanics. So the wish got granted I guess...
Anyway it is a shame indeed. If only uncaged animation-locked survivor got some protection, then the buff would be OK.
Also for scavenger - it no longer works as a gen-rush perk. So outside of sabo-toolboxes (in weird game where it runs out)/facing 3gen camper the perk is dead. I am pretty sure it will barely get any usage. Another worthless perk to the long list of worthless perks
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I just disagree on principle, because everyone has their own voice and everyone can give their own feedback. Trying to speak for the whole community strikes me as quite selfish of others. Many changes are based on community feedback. Some changes are good, some bad.
Where I agree is that the state of the game could be a lot better and much things are to do to reduce uneven matches.
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Everyone of course does have their own voice, my statements don't supercede anyone else's. I only spoke to the sentiments I've seen expressed on this forum, twitter, and what I personally feel.
There are a lot of people who are completely fine with how things have turned out and how things are going. I leave it to them to voice their satisfaction, but I'm talking about a general perception issue that BHVR has to see growing. The last year or so of this game has been some of the most miserable it has ever been in a long while. Not for anything majorly gamebreaking, but just due to people feeling increasingly alienated from the game. You can read it here everyday and you can see it in other areas. A lot of killers are extremely unhappy right now and feel like they aren't being given the same level of attention.
They're asking for accessibility options and getting radio silence from the devs, which is normal, but also active snark and hate from a lot of survivors.
Killers by in large want more ways to express their skill and instead we keep getting obtuse perks with pounds of limitation and pennies of benefit. Killer characters have been some of the most non interactive designs for two chapters straight who are so despised by survivors some of them even refuse to play matches they appear in. Some even go as far as to DDOS others for playing certain killers, I know from experience.
People have been very vocal about long standing issues like maps being far too big for basically most of the killer cast to manage and some maps having far too many palettes and strong tile chains. I've been playing this game since 2016 and we're still dealing with gen speeds being able to be pushed far too fast for a lot of new, casual and veteran players alike. Addressing the self-healing issue was great, it has helped alot with bringing hit and run back into a viable area. Yet, very few killers can effectively use this ultimately because there isn't time enough. While individual killer inadequacies take time to address, the gen repair issue along with toolboxes and gen repair speed perks have basically been untouched.
I'm not trying to speak for the whole community, I'm commenting on what I see everyday when I read the forums. The devs take feedback and still miss the point of it a lot of times. Perceptually it feels like more often than not the miss is in relation to killer centric things currently. If survivors were getting the shaft I'd keep the same energy and lobby for them, but they're fine aside from dealing with tunneling and facecamping(which is getting addressed).
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machine learning is not proactive perk. they're trying mirror the perk to be something like their survivor perk where when you lose, you gain bonuses but those perks where you lose gens to get bonuses are terrible for killer in most cases.
Killers by in large want more ways to express their skill and instead we keep getting obtuse perks with pounds of limitation and pennies of benefit.
yeah it is unfortunate that they're unable to design a chase enhancer haste perk for killer. I mean I would take 1% permanent haste perk over these chase perks. you could wait for next killer chapter perks
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I totally agree with the thing about game afoot.
its an absolute useless perk, it has really no purpose.
You have to be in a chase, with the obsession, than you have to break your chase, destroy something and than you have 10 seconds to find the obsession or some other survivor and catch up to them.
With this in mind i relay start to think if the developers even know how far are survivor can go in 2 or 3 seconds, these days. Breaking a chase for a few seconds could be an absolute neck break for almost every killer. the only killers that could benefit from this are killers with a dash ability, or maybe a hag.
And machine learning, as you said, is the same perk but even worse. You dont even can control if there are even survivors near you when it triggers. It only has value when you patrol gens. And so Machine learning is just another perk that makes three genning look more attractive for killers. Even tho BHVR stated that they want to nerve three genning.
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I do understand it but there are also a lot things other people wanted to have which devs brought in.
I also understand that veterans (I've been playing for a few years too and have over 6,000 hours on my account) might feel like they're not listening to them enough, but where would the game end if they focus too much on high/ top MMR?
Personally, I don't even have "impossible" problems with it most of the time because most of the time I'm able to counteract the pressure by punishing their mistakes. Not always, but quite often, but yes it can be very stressful/exhausting to have a few games in a row like that. When people go into a match with 4 toolboxes, I have no mercy. I agree that most of the time it's not really comfortable facing them and it can feel pretty ugly.
I sometimes also just dodge this kind of lobbies or close the game when i see that people last second switch onto 4 toolboxes because i not always have real motivation playing such a game. Happens not often but sometimes i do. Especically combined with map offerings. I have to say i almost never throw map offerings to higher my win chances in any way, not as killer nor as survivor.
Still, I'm able to accept games that I just can't do anything about, because that's something you can never 100% eliminate in an asymmetric game without badly damaging other sectors, at least not in one single game mode.
Anyway... I'd really, really like to run a test over a period of time on "live servers" with repair toolboxes completely disabled just to see where that goes and which situations will appear cause of that.
In general i would appreciate more tests under real circumstances on live servers because a lot of things you can simply not test on a PTB and how it affects the whole playerbase. The most you only can guess.
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I think you're missing some stuff here.
I'll tackle Machine Learning first because it's really the one thing we just disagree on-- I don't think it's fair to say that a perk is bad because it activates when a generator is completed (after all, Machine Learning is far from the first with that requirement), and I definitely disagree with you saying that you're supposed to be protecting generators. You're not, you're supposed to be killing survivors, and defending generators is just a good way to achieve that goal- that's relevant because while Machine Learning does require you to have lost a generator, it gives you a benefit that helps you to fulfil your actual objective. 10% Haste is nothing to sneeze at, and Undetectable on top of that is a really nice cherry on top. Still, we ultimately just disagree there.
Where I think you're being more legitimately misguided is in the other two. To tackle Scavenger first, I think part of what you missed is the specific feedback that the PTB version required no downtime; it was compared to Built to Last a lot, to highlight that BtL requires you to go hop in a locker and take time off generators to recharge your item. Scavenger, meanwhile, had no required downside; you just got your charges back and could use them immediately. This change enforces either downtime, or a net neutral efficiency; your +50% bonus from the toolbox offsets the -50% penalty from the perk, sure, but if you actually repair through that you're not really gaining anything from bringing the perk in the first place. On the flipside, if you get off generators to actually wait out the penalty's timer, you're not doing generators during that time, which is enforced downtime more than equivalent to Built to Last. It'll remain to be seen just how effective the perk ends up being, of course, but this was very much a direct response to the specific feedback that was given to Scavenger.
Same with Pyramid Head. The "much desired" QoL change suggested on the PTB was anything but; overwhelming feedback was that it shouldn't go live without heavy adjustments, and if they didn't have time to make those adjustments then simply cancelling it (for now) was absolutely the right call. Again, a direct response to feedback, not ignoring it or flying in the face of it.
It's also worth mentioning the other changes that came with this developer update, because those were also a direct response to feedback. EMPs felt too available for how strong they are, so they're reducing the availability. It was hard to tell at a glance when a Biopod was hacked, so they made it more obvious. Straight complaint -> resolution, exactly as with Scavenger and Pyramid Head.
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It's not good perk on most killers, but I can see buba with tinkerer and machine learning.
Bubba with +10% movement speed, oh boy...
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Perks tied to objective loss for killers don't feel good and have far less actual value. We have a lot of much better ways to get Undetectable that are essentially on demand. Machine Learning giving 10% haste on paper is great, but in practice getting that time gated haste at what is essentially random timing can either be extremely helpful or just flat out useless with pretty much no middle ground. It has was the same exact design flaws as Game Afoot but even worse yet covered for by a much larger haste bonus. It's a bad perk. Everything this perk can do is done either better or more consistently by other perks with exception of its 10% haste. That's not enough to ask killers to loss a gen over. It needs rework that brings the haste value down to something less crazy and its restrictions need to reassesed. Considering they called Machine Learn I was expecting that this would be an escalation type perk where as the game progressed gained some sort permanent buff to increase your efficiency.
As for Scavenger, I said in my original post that "diminishing returns are still returns". Yes, they take a 50% cut to repair speed, but they can still stay on gens while getting their charges back. Understand that cut is only a soft loss of efficiency as perks can and will compensate for some of that loss. Toolboxes are too much of an outlier in their current state to be building perks like this around especially when there is already no shortage of unconditional stacking gen speed increase. It's one of the most infuriating parts of this game because people have been telling the devs about this for years. They've done small changes in the past, but there needs to be emphasis placed on stablizing how hard survivors can push the pace of the game. Scavenger exacerbates the issue more because now you're asking killers to not only deal with toolboxes getting even more support, but asking them to deal with them in some way potentially every game.
Pyramid Head has been needing something to make his torment see more use and while I acknowledge the issues presented by survivors and agree to an extent. This was something that would have been really nice for him to have even if they put in his iri addons rather than just shelve the whole thing and give him nothing at all. He has very useless addons that make no sense to iri addons and could be changed around. Why they didn't go that route to start with is beyond me.
They did take the feedback for Singularity's issues to heart and made substantive changes that generally are good. I don't care about the Singularity though and it wasn't even something I really touched on in my original post much at all. The perception issue I did touch one was specifically in regards to killer players. They did well to sort out Singularity's issues which is what I mainly expected them to do, but the perception I spoke of has been built up over a long long period time and will not change just over Singularity having good experience especially when in the same patch Pyramid Head players are getting left in lurch, killers who don't want to continue dealing with toolboxes as they currently exist and the wider issue of gen speed perks being far too forgiving and prevalent for years at this point expressed the problems with scavenger and the same level caution they used with Pyramid Head to call something off entirely didn't get used with Scavenger. We know how badly the game can get with toolboxes, but most pyramid head's weren't going to tunnel and camp folks to such an overwhelming degree.
They take feedback and often miss the point of what is being expressed in that feedback. So sometimes we get good solid on the mark changes that improve the quality of the game for everyone, but more other than not we get weird changes that make no sense, actively detrimental changes that end up lasting forever or get banal bandaid over bullet wound changes.
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No purpose? You cannot say this when it pairs SO well with rancor
The speed buff is just an extra effect, you use it for the obsession switching and with rancor you're pretty much tombstone Myers on any killer. You just have to know how to use it correctly
I'm really offended by this given that it is my favorite in my rancor build, slap on NWO, remember me, slug the obsession on 1 gen, boom instant kill, then go hit someone else on a gate. If they're not the obsession, leave them slugged and find another person
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Well, hold on a second- the point being discussed here isn't just if the changes are a net good, the point you raised was BHVR not correctly interpreting feedback, right? And my rebuttal is, they absolutely did. People complained specifically about a free toolbox reset without any loss in efficiency, which is why they changed it the way they did. People complained specifically about the Pyramid Head change, and so they revisited it. That's why the Singularity is relevant, it's another example of them changing the exact thing people were complaining about. There's nothing that they missed the point on, with the sole exception that the only people complaining about Machine Learning just didn't like the core design of it and so there wasn't much to act on there; everything else had an overall trend of what the complaints were, and those complaints were acted on.
I don't mean to be rude or accusatory, but it kinda sounds like your feedback was different and you're extrapolating that out to make a wider criticism about BHVR taking the wrong idea from the community's feedback, but that isn't what happened here.
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If you like it then more power to you, but I don't play Rancor builds and even in a Rancor build if the perk had the same level of consistency as say Trail of Torment it would still overall be better than it currently is.
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Rancor does have consistency, you just have to know how to use it
If you're leaving it up to luck to just happen upon the obsession during endgame then yeah it will be inconsistent
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Calling the PH buff “QoL” is a bit of a stretch. That was much more than just QoL and he really did not need it.
I sort of agree about Machine Learning though, the problem wasn't its strength, 7% Haste is significant. The problem was that its inconsistent and too difficult to activate.
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I see them as missing the mark and maybe my general disillusionment with the long standing issues of the game have heavily colored how their actions seem and how the complaints of others seem. That said, I do not view the way this has shaken out as being a point where this was handled well when in the wider context of the long standing complaints AND the End Transmission centric complaints.
People complain about game pacing every single day on both sides between tunneling and gen rushing. Both need to be addressed, but rather than at the very least not aggravate the issue they did the opposite by making a perk that even in a diminished state still adds onto a major pain point for half of their player base.
As for Pyramid Head, people have been asking for him to get something better for one of his iri addons. The only that gives undetectable for walking on your own trails. It's such a hyper specific addon that there is negative value to using it because undetectable is something much more obtainable via perks rather than a expensive hard to get addon. This change would have fit the bill perfectly if putting it base kit was too risky. I know they read the forum enough to pick up feedback and act on it as well as get in on some of the random memes. So yes, I'm going to judge them harder for not doing the sensible compromise and just nixing the whole thing.
For Singularity, I said they did a good job with that, but doing well with that isn't going to suddenly cover years worth of ground. Machine Learning is a perk that suffers from a design habit they've gotten into over the past I feel like 2 and half years. Where rather than designing killer perks that help killers express their own skill we keep getting perks with obtuse restrictions that are hard to activate consistently or overly reliant on survivors rather than the killer themselves. Which itself is another symptom from an older issue where killer design shifted from generally producing killers with decent powers that feel good to use and easy to understand for the killer player and required a bit more though and mechanical skill to counter from survivors. Now we get killers with hard coded counterplay and overwrought kits that are much less consistent.
Killers have been asking for accessibility features to handle issues with sensitive or impaired hearing and motion sickness. I know these aren't feature that can come instantly, but when you have as many people asking as I've seen on this forum you should say something. I'm not just spreading my personal feelings out and trying to speak for everyone else, but it isn't hard to see the high level of dissatisfaction with the game in this sample size of the community.
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i dont think that a good combo with ONE perk is a reason to call it a good perk. If you have to run a perk with another perk just to give it some value, just how good can it really be? If you want to play like this you could just play noed on a killer who can kill survivors and save a perk slot.
And i agree with this, if you like to play it, fine with me but this combo only gets value after the gates are powered. So 2 perk slots are usless over the first half of the game.
In my opinion it would be way better to just pick 2 perks that have value all game long.
But fun over all, if you like it, like it. But i still dont think its good.
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Game Afoot is what lacks consistency, not Rancor.
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I'll tackle Machine Learning first because it's really the one thing we just disagree on-- I don't think it's fair to say that a perk is bad because it activates when a generator is completed (after all, Machine Learning is far from the first with that requirement), and I definitely disagree with you saying that you're supposed to be protecting generators. You're not, you're supposed to be killing survivors, and defending generators is just a good way to achieve that goal- that's relevant because while Machine Learning does require you to have lost a generator, it gives you a benefit that helps you to fulfil your actual objective. 10% Haste is nothing to sneeze at, and Undetectable on top of that is a really nice cherry on top. Still, we ultimately just disagree there.
You as a killer are supposed to protect the gens, otherwise there aura would not be revealed to you. You have to protect them or else the survivors escape. Its like saying, the survivors are not supposed to heal, they only supposed to escape.
Machine learning as of right now is not a good perk. You have to kick a gen, then you kick another gen and then ignore it until it gets repaired. You cant activate it on multiple gens and you have no control over when or even if it triggers. So you are not even guaranteed that it even takes effect in your game.
I think there are much better ways for a perk like this to work.
- Make it so the perk activates right after kicking a gen, this way you could combine it with nowhere to hid for example.
- Lower the haste to 7% and make it activate every time a gen is repaired.
- Lower the haste to 7% and make it so you can put it on multiple gens.
I just think the requirements are to high for this level of inconsistency.
Same with Pyramid Head. The "much desired" QoL change suggested on the PTB was anything but; overwhelming feedback was that it shouldn't go live without heavy adjustments, and if they didn't have time to make those adjustments then simply cancelling it (for now) was absolutely the right call. Again, a direct response to feedback, not ignoring it or flying in the face of it.
I think what he wanted to say by "much desired" is just that pyramid head players were supposed to get a big and much needed thing and now they dont get anything because the developers dont really know how to do it.
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Noed can get cleansed and outplayed, even if you camp while anyone except instadown killers
Rancor can't, and you get more than just camping when paired with game afoot
But yeah that's what endgame perks are, they only come into play at the end
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